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After Jillian Tamaki received Caldecott recognition for the graphic novel This One Summer last February, you can bet your honor seals that people are looking closely at all types of picture books in 2015. One title that I hope this year’s Caldecott committee will bring to the table is Eleanor Davis and Drew Weing’s Flop to the Top!. Now I know what some of you might be questioning, and here are my responses: Yes, it’s a comic book. Yes, it’s an early reader. And yes, it’s also a picture book (to me at least).

This story benefits from its format, as panels set pace and mood through their sizes, layouts, borders, and background colors. For example, when Wanda’s jealousy grows at her pet-gone-viral (20 million likes!), the frame in which she appears becomes bordered in a thick red line; when she realizes in horror that she’s been out-celebritied by “Floppy Dog” Wilbur, the fill of her panel is all black. Later, when Wanda trails Wilbur and “Sassy Cat” on her bicycle as they drive away in a snazzy limo, a brisk pace is set through an inlay of panels on a double-page spread. When Wanda finds Wilbur and makes her final apologetic plea, she appears content in a narrow, horizontal panel in the middle of the page. The symmetry of this image (Wanda sandwiched between two security guards) provides focus. White space around a close-up of Wilbur in the following panel marks the beginning of the story’s resolution.

The physical sizes, colors, and borders of speech balloons emphasize plot and characterization, as seen when Wanda declares “You are a BAD DOG” and her oversized statement is bordered in a thick black line, displaying her vehemence. From the “many faces of Floppy Dog” on the endpapers (spoiler alert: they’re all pretty much the same) to siblings James and Jade’s defiance of gender norms through their toy choices and pink and blue-colored speech balloons, illustrations provide further depth to character not reflected in the text.

There is an air of sophistication about Weing and Davis’s soft palette and layered images, which are drawn and colored digitally and resemble transparent tissue paper, or even stained glass. Surreal shapes, diagonal lines, and analogous coloring heighten emotion and highlight the crowd’s outrageous, herd-like behavior, all the while drawing readers’ eyes to the main characters’ actions amidst the chaos. Smooth, curvy shapes emphasize the human nature of the story and reinforce the happy, hopeful ending, while hip Instagram-esque photo boxes and the recurring star motif (as seen on the stage, in the sky, in Wanda’s clothing, and elsewhere) express the theme of celebrity and raise questions about its importance.

What do you all think? Does this book — like Wilbur — have star status?

The post Flop to the Top! appeared first on The Horn Book.

As the recent visit to the Small Press Expo showed, there is no shortage of supremely talented cartoonists out there. And the folks at First Second are taking full advantage of this by scooping them up. The latest is Drew Weing whose webcomic The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo will be published next year. Geek Dad has details and an interview. Weing (Set to Sea) has been publishing the comic online since 2014; the print edition comes out in September 2016. It's lovely charming and spooky.

Nursery Rhyme Comics
Edited by Chris Duffy
Introduction by Leonard S. Marcus
$18.99
ISBN: 978-1-59643-600-8
Ages 9-12
On shelves October 11, 2011

Nursery rhymes. What’s up with that? (I feel like a stand up comedian when I put it that way). They’re ubiquitous but nonsensical. Culturally relevant but often of unknown origins. Children’s literary scholar Leonard Marcus ponders the amazing shelf life of nursery rhymes himself and comes up with some answers. Why is it that they last as long as they do in the public consciousness? Marcus speculates that “the old-chestnut rhymes that beguile in part by sounding so emphatically clear about themselves while in fact leaving almost everything to our imagination” leave themselves open to interpretation. And who better to do a little interpreting than cartoonists? Including as many variegated styles as could be conceivably collected in a single 128-page book, editor Chris Duffy plucks from the cream of the children’s graphic novel crop (and beyond!) to create a collection so packed with detail and delight that you’ll find yourself flipping to the beginning to read it all over again after you’re done. Mind you, I wouldn’t go handing this to a three-year-old any time soon, but for a certain kind of child, this crazy little concoction is going to just the right bit of weirdness they require.

Fifty artists are handed a nursery rhyme apiece. The goal? Illustrate said poem. Give it a bit of flair. Put in a plot if you have to. So it is that a breed of all new comics, those of the nursery ilk, fill this book. Here at last you can see David Macaulay bring his architectural genius to “London Bridge is Falling Down” or Roz Chast give “There Was a Crooked Man” a positive spin. Leonard Marcus offers an introduction giving credence to this all new coming together of text and image while in the back of the book editor Chris Duffy discusses the rhymes’ history and meaning. And as he says in the end, “We’re just letting history take its course.”

In the interest of public scrutiny, the complete list of artists on this book consists of Nick Abadzis, Andrew Arnold, Kate Beaton, Vera Brosgol, Nick Bruel, Scott Campbell, Lilli Carre, Roz Chast, JP Coovert, Jordan Crane, Rebecca Dart, Eleanor Davis, Vanessa Davis, Theo Ellsworth, Matt Forsythe, Jules Feiffer, Bob Flynn, Alexis Frederick-Frost, Ben Hatke, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Lucy Knisley, David Macaulay, Mark Martin, Patrick McDonnell, Mike Mignola, Tony Millionaire, Tao Nyeu, George O’Connor, Mo Oh, Eric Orchard, Laura Park, Cyril Pedrosa, Lark Pien, Aaron Renier, Dave Roman, Marc Rosenthal, Stan Sakai, Richard Sala, Mark Siegel, James Sturm, Raina Telgemeier, Craig Thompson, Richard Thompson, Sara Varon, Jen Wang, Drew Weing, Gahan Wilson, Gene Luen Yang, and Stephanie Yue (whew!). And as with any collection, some of the inclusions are going to be stronger than others. Generally speaking if fifty people do something, some of them are going to have a better grasp on the process than others. That said, only a few of these versions didn’t do it for me. At worst the versions were mediocre. At best they went in a new direction with their mat